Human Struggle Is Real Story

The cameras will be on him. The headlines will be about him. The prayers will be with him.

The race is about horses but the focus will be on a human, this Saturday’s Kentucky Derby being about paralyzed trainer Dan Hendricks.

He trains the favored Brother Derek, yet he cannot leap for his horse down the stretch, nor run to his horse after a win, nor even stand next to his horse if he reaches the winners’ circle.

Hendricks, based at Santa Anita, could become the first trainer to saddle a Derby winner that he cannot walk or ride.

The angles will be soft, the edges will be honed, the story will be heartwarming.

And most of it will be wrong.

“It’s so sickening,” said Hendricks’ wife, Samantha. “It’s so ridiculous.”

While showing only the filtered sunlight that is his Derby moment, the cameras will miss the gritty backstretch of Hendricks’ life.

While describing only the wheelchair, the headlines will neglect the truth that lives there.

He injured himself while riding a dirt bike his wife begged him not to ride.

He returned to work only because he felt he didn’t have a choice.

His success comes from things that weren’t affected by his ability to walk. He still had the vision to buy Brother Derek, the experience to work him, and the feel to hone him.

Hendricks says he is not trying to inspire anyone.

He’s simply trying to win a race amid lingering anger and frustration from losing the use of his legs.

For two minutes Saturday, it could be beautiful. But the rest of the time, it’s not always so pretty.

If you must tell a story, they say, tell that one.

“”How did this become a sap story?” Samantha said.

Dan, 47, agreed.

“I’m not a hero like a policeman, a fireman, a doctor,” he said. “I’m just a guy who screwed around with his weekend hobby and paid for it.”

*

It happens all the time, doesn’t it? I write about these things every other week, don’t I?

Someone is injured, and they immediately become an inspiration. Someone uses a wheelchair, and they quickly become Mother Teresa.

Too often, it seems, the person becomes the disability, and personality is lost in the platitudes.

Not this time. Not this story. Not about a husband and wife who are very human and very hurting.

I met Dan at an Arcadia mall restaurant, where he ordered a pizza with no water or soda because too much liquid can be a pain to his paralyzed system.

He wheeled in quickly ahead of me, kept his head down and his voice low.

“I don’t want to be the guy everyone points out,” he said. “I don’t want it to be like, ‘Oh my God, he’s in a wheelchair, look what he can do in a wheelchair!’ ”

I spoke to his wife later by phone. She is a respected horse trader, married to Dan for 19 years -- and with no plans to attend the Derby.

“It might all be too much,” she said. “I was very angry at what he put us through, and I’m still trying to bury the hatchet.”

This may not be what people want to read. But it is the unvarnished truth, and that is the only thing the Hendricks are selling.

The reality is, Hendricks has saddled more than 70 stakes winners and his first Derby appearance would be worthy of the front page without the wheelchair.

And the reality is, he had been warned repeatedly by his wife against riding dirt bikes on motocross courses, particularly after Hendricks’ brother nearly lost his hand in an accident. Yet he did it anyway.

“I told those guys they were crazy to ever ride,” Samantha said. “I very plainly told him not to do it, that it was wrong, that because he had a wife and three children, it was irresponsible.”

Hendricks raced motorcycles as a youngster, though, and recently began fooling around on them again.

He loved speed, he took all the safety precautions, and, in July 2004, he stopped at a track on the way home from working horses.

“None of the wives like us to do it,” said Jack Burger, a longtime friend of Hendricks. “But it’s something we all love, and boys need to have their fun.”

This time, that fun lasted about a half hour, before Hendricks’ bike crashed and he broke his neck, paralyzing him from the waist down.

His wife was so upset, she didn’t visit him in the hospital for several days.

“I went through a lot of depression, spent a lot of time looking at the ceiling,” Dan said. “I had a lot of guilt, wondering, ‘What did I do to myself? What did I do to my family?’ ”

After several months, his 25-horse barn needing him, his clients supporting him, he rolled out of the rehabilitation hospital and back to the track.

“There was not one moment of inspiration, it was just a matter of necessity,” Hendricks said. “You can’t sit around all day.”

Maneuvering his chair through the dirt and hay was hard, but manageable. What he lost in being unable to ride the horses, perhaps he gained in being closer to them.

“Horses feel much more secure at creatures they can look down upon,” he said. “They all look down on me now.”

He can get closer to his horses now. He can whisper more easily to them now. He feeds Brother Derek carrots and communicates at a different level.

On Saturday, the sports world will see Dan Hendricks sitting trackside with his three children, a portrait of unfailing grace and undeniable courage.

But Dan and Samantha hope everyone looks past that.

They hope the world sees only a smart horseman, a strong horse and a human struggle.

Said Samantha: “If Dan wins the Derby, that’s going to help, but one day this ride is going to be over, and reality is going to set in, and nobody sees that.”

Said Dan: “This is not me trying to make a statement. This is just me trying to move on.”

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.